English is a simple, yet difficult language. It's made up exclusively of foreign words which are pronounced wrong. -- Kurt Tucholsky

Now we learn that migrants do not just menace the weekly shop and annual holiday. They are “swarming” towards us, as if they are a host of mosquitos that must be drenched with pesticide, or a plague of locusts destroying everything in its path. The inhuman comparison is not from some newspaper columnist, who is paid to pull faces to order like a grotesque in a freak show, but from David Cameron, our expensively educated and supposedly civilised prime minister.

Even if you think the Twitter storms about political “misspeaks” and “gaffes” are fatuous, consider what you did not hear after the PM’s outburst last week. No one, not Cameron, not the opposition – what’s left of it – not the talking heads on the media thought of saying that while Britain reserves the right to keep out economic migrants, it welcomes genuine refugees, including genuine refugees now stranded at the Channel.

So Nick Cohen, criticizes David Cameron for failing to distinguish between 'economic migrants' and 'genuine refugees'.

When ministers from the conservative CSU party (among others) insist on the importance of exactly this distinction, they are accused of populism and of trying to curry favor with right-wing nativist groups and neo-Nazis.

To sum up: In England, a much more ethnically diverse country than Germany and soon to be the most ethnically-diverse Western nation of them all, left-wing commentators acknowledge the legitimacy and importance of the distinction between economic migrants and 'genuine refugees', and want government policy to reflect that. In Germany, endorsing that very same distinction will earn you comparisons to far-right nativists and neo-Nazis.

So, thousands of Kosovars are getting on buses to Germany, filing claims for political asylum, and being accommodated in German shelters. The trend started in 2014, and has skyrocketed in 2015. Tens of thousands of Kosovars have applied for political asylum in Germany in the past two years. Considering Kosovo has a population of only 1.83 million people total -- half the size of Berlin -- these are gigantic numbers.

So, what has happened in Kosovo to prompt this wave of emigration? Has there been a recent crisis?

The answer is no. Kosovo is classified by the World Bank as a lower middle income country. According to the World Bank (which keeps good numbers regardless of what you think of its policies) Kosovo's Gross National Income per capital has increased 60% in the last decade. Average life expectancy has risen by 2 years over the last decade, to 70.8. That is close to the average for developing countries in Europe, and four years longer than the entire group of lower-middle income countries. Its poverty rate is 29.2%, down from 45% in 2006. Kosovo receives millions of dollars in development aid from a number of sources.

I visited Kosovo for over a week in 2010. A friend of mine was a development worker there, and gave me plenty of tips. Kosovo is easy to get around in because it's so small, but has some dramatic mountain scenery. It was very easy to chat with people, because Kosovars love Americans because of the role the US played in achieving independence. Main streets in Prishtina are named after George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and there is a massive sculpture of Bill Clinton downtown. Most younger Kosovars are trying to learn English, and many have learned it pretty well. Kosovo was the only country in Europe I've ever visited where being an American earned me spontaneous hugs, handshakes, and free gifts in stores. Like everyone in that part of the world, Kosovars are generally extremely friendly and hospitable.

Kosovo is quite safe. I like to wander around alone in cities, and I could do this everywhere I went without any problem. The only place that felt a bit sketchy were in the north, where I went to visit Gracanica, a monastery whose magnificent Orthodox cathedral whose interior is covered with 14th-century frescoes. There were a few UN or OSCE security guards there to prevent intercommunal violence, but they looked bored. If you wander into one of the few remaining Serbian enclaves in Kosovo, you'll know it, because the colors of the Serbian flag are everywhere, and you can buy pork. Serbs stared at me a bit in Gracanica, but only with curiosity. Needless to say, I didn't go around telling everyone I was an American up there. Kosovar politics are corrupt, just as they are in virtually all countries in that general region. Many political parties are based around shady millionaires or former paramilitary captains from the liberation war. Some parts of the country are still mined.

Most Kosovars are Muslim, but not at all fanatical about it. Many will say they were forced to convert by the Ottomans, and so their heart really isn't in it. Kosovo has its own kind of rakia, just like every other country in that region. And just like every other country in that region, they insist theirs is the only drinkable version and the others are horse piss. You see very few headscarves, and women in summer wear skimpy clothing. If you make the mistake of thinking that means they're available for a one-night stand, you will be immediately corrected by a brother or cousin. Bridal boutiques are literally everywhere; you get the very strong impression this is a country in which young people's only chance at regular sex is getting married.

Overall, Kosovo is about in the middle in terms of developing countries I've visited. It has all the problems developing countries have -- and there are a lot of those -- but it's not falling apart or in crisis. Starvation and malnutrition is rare, and there is an educational system that functions at a primitive level. If you can possibly afford it, you try to send your kids to private school -- just like in other countries in the region. Nevertheless, illiteracy is disappearing among younger generations, as is the literacy gap between men and women.

So, to sum up: Kosovars are not leaving their country because of war, starvation, epidemics, ethnic cleansing, or other similar issues. There is simmering low-level ethnic conflict between Albanian and Serbian ethnicities, and minorities such as Sinti and Roma do very poorly compared to the majority, which is the case in all socieities. Kosovar is not poor, it's lower-middle-income and making slow but steady progress. It is also received hundreds of millions of dollars in development aid, although there's a lively debate about whether that's done much good.

The reason Kosovars are traveling to Germany and claiming asylum is that (1) their country is relatively poor, compared to wealthier Western European neighbors; (2) Western Europe is incredibly easy to reach by plane, bus, or even informal taxi (g); (3) they have been told they will get 'welcome money' from Germany (false) and a monthly stipend of €140 while they're here (true). They have nothing to lose. If their asylum claim is rejected, as it will be, they may be able to escape repatriation any number of ways, either legally or through concealment. Odd jobs or petty crime may well earn them more money here than they could get at home. And there's always the one-in-a-million shot (almost literally one-in-a-million) that they will actually get asylum or another grant of legal status. If they are repatriated, they will simply return to whatever high-rise they lived in with their families before. I don't blame them for trying to get to Germany. I might even try this in their situation. But, in my view, that doesn't mean Germany has any moral, ethical, or legal obligation to grant them permanent legal residency status.

Here are some pictures I took on my trip to Kosovo. Interesting place! Info in hover text.

Professor Robert Plomin, a behavioral geneticist at King's College London, explains in this fascinating Guardian podcast that genes explain about 60% of differences between children in educational achievement. It applies to all areas, from math to humanities.

These differences show up very early, as early as 4 years old. Different schools or teaching methods explain at most 20%. Plomin notes that educator training materials which tout unproven educational methods are worthless. And sets out a program for genetically screening children to direct educational resources at those who most need them, in a personalized manner.

People ask nervously: Why am I interested in European immigration policy? Because it has the potential to fundamentally shape European society for decades. As I just pointed out, the evidence shows that immigration is one of the most important factors, probably the most important factor, behind the collapse of the British Labour Party -- the one that, "left to their own devices, the respondents would have talked about all night."

If European left parties, like Labour, allow themselves to become closely linked with the unpopular policy of uncontrolled mass immigration (as opposed to controlled immigration of skilled workers needed by industry coupled with asylum for genuine refugees), they may well destroy themselves for decades. After that, European countries will be ruled by a stable majority coalition of the center-right (35%) and anti-immigrant (15%) parties. We are already seeing this happen: the anti-immigrant Swedish Democrats party doubled its support in the 2014 election.

If this happens, result will be a long-term shift to the right which may well herald the end of the European social welfare state as we know it. That is why a dyed-in-the-wool Socialist like Bernie Sanders unapologetically says immigration needs to be kept in check. Bernie Sanders is no fool. Long-term coalitions of the center and farther right will also, of course, also worsen the situation of immigrants. Anyone who can't see this danger staring us in the face is whistling past the graveyard. I think and write about this issue a lot because it seems to me the most important domestic policy issue we face, and I think many people don't yet realize that fact.

Bernie Sanders is the U.S. Senator from Vermont, and a self-declared 'democratic socialist'. Until very recently, that label was about as successful in US politics as 'unrepentant pederast'. But now Sanders is running for the Democratic presidential nomination against Hillary Clinton. Although he has almost no chance of winning it, he is attracting huge crowds and plenty of attention, and is clearly forcing Clinton to the left. Sanders is easily the most left-wing serious candidate for a Presidential nomination in at least 15, if not 50 years. He would certainly be my choice for President.

Ezra Klein

You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing ...

Bernie Sanders

Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal.

Ezra Klein

Really?

Bernie Sanders

Of course. That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ...

...

Ezra Klein

It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn't it?

Bernie Sanders

It would make everybody in America poorer —you're doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don't think there's any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.

You know what youth unemployment is in the United States of America today? If you're a white high school graduate, it's 33 percent, Hispanic 36 percent, African American 51 percent. You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers, or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids?

I think from a moral responsibility we've got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty, but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer.

Ezra Klein

Then what are the responsibilities that we have? Someone who is poor by US standards is quite well off by, say, Malaysian standards, so if the calculation goes so easily to the benefit of the person in the US, how do we think about that responsibility?

We have a nation-state structure. I agree on that. But philosophically, the question is how do you weight it? How do you think about what the foreign aid budget should be? How do you think about poverty abroad?

Bernie Sanders

I do weigh it. As a United States senator in Vermont, my first obligation is to make certain kids in my state and kids all over this country have the ability to go to college, which is why I am supporting tuition-free public colleges and universities. I believe we should create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and ask the wealthiest people in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes. I believe we should raise the minimum wage to at least 15 bucks an hour so people in this county are not living in poverty. I think we end the disgrace of some 20 percent of our kids living in poverty in America. Now, how do you do that?

What you do is understand there's been a huge redistribution of wealth in the last 30 years from the middle class to the top tenth of 1 percent. The other thing that you understand globally is a horrendous imbalance in terms of wealth in the world. As I mentioned earlier, the top 1 percent will own more than the bottom 99 percent in a year or so. That's absurd. That takes you to programs like the IMF and so forth and so on.

But I think what we need to be doing as a global economy is making sure that people in poor countries have decent-paying jobs, have education, have health care, have nutrition for their people. That is a moral responsibility, but you don't do that, as some would suggest, by lowering the standard of American workers, which has already gone down very significantly.

The most fundamental distinction lawyers and philosophers learn is between 'ought' and 'is', or the similar fact/value distinction. If you go into court and argue that your client should not be sent to prison because the laws are unfair and really ought to be improved, you will lose, and your client will go to prison. As the old saying goes, this ain't a court of justice, this is a court of law.

Should the native inhabitants of European nation-states embrace large numbers of immigrants who don't look like them and don't share their language, religion, and/or culture? You can have a lively and interesting debate about this question, with plausible arguments on both sides. But even if you argue yes, emphatically, they ought do to so, that does not mean it is the case that they actually do.

If you ignore the fact that most native Britons, Germans, Swedes, Danes, etc. do not want large numbers of people from very different cultures being allowed to permanently settle in their countries, you risk a backlash that will make the situation worse. We are seeing this right now with the rise of right-wing nativist parties all over Europe. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The British Labour party is also finding this out. As we all know, it recently got its head handed to it on a platter in a humiliating national defeat. Much of the blame of course rests with Scotland, where Labour supporters ditched the party to vote SNP. Some more of the blame goes to an unconvincing campaign. But in their desperate attempt to understand why one of Britain's two mass political parties is disintegrating, Labour analysts are hitting upon one theme over and over: immigration.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Labour oversaw a massive increase in immigration into Great Britain. Former Labour speechwriter Andrew Neather has claimed that one of the reasons for this policy change was that Labour wanted to create a new 'multicultural' Britain.

Whether you agree with this policy is one thing. Quite another is whether closely associating itself with large increases in immigration damaged Labour. The evidence is pouring in on that point.

Shortly after their shellacking, Labour convened focus groups of former Labour voters to find out why they abandoned the party. In an article tellingly entitled "Labour's lost voters may never return again (sic), study finds", the Guardian -- summarized the results. The voters identified a weak candidate and tax policy as some of their concerns, but the party:

...was also seen as anti-business, in the pocket of the unions and not tough enough on immigration. “Immigration is the topic that, left to their own devices, the respondents would have talked about all night. Their central arguments, across all groups and repeated frequently, were along the lines that our country is full, our country is broke and public services are creaking and cannot stand extra strain.”

Recently, seven Labour MPs who lost their seats in the last election decided to canvass their constituents to find out why. You may notice a certain pattern:

The campaign, the authors claim, addressed only “the needy and greedy”, leaving the rest ignored. The party had nothing to say on welfare, business creation or immigration, “sounding as if it was on the side of those that don’t work”.

Labour, they say, was “frightened to enter the difficult conversations on immigration, leaving those discussions to go on without the Labour party”.

The seven also suggest Labour needs not just to regain economic credibility but to rethink its approach to immigration, advocating a shift from free to fair movement of labour within the EU.

They write: “We need to answer concerns about immigration and identity, especially for people attracted by Ukip’s resistance to change.

...

We had been told by senior figures in the party that Ukip was a boon to Labour, splitting the right of the country, but not for marginal seats like ours. In these white working class communities, particularly on the coast, Ukip tore our vote apart.

“This loss of the white working class vote is a crisis for our party, not just because we lost, but because it raises an existential question about who we represent.”

Should Europeans be more accommodating toward immigrants? Perhaps they should. Are they going to be more accommodating to immigrants in the near future? No. In fact there is every reason to think they will continue on a well-established path of being increasingly less accommodating to immigrants. They will increasingly vote for nativist parties and insist on stricter controls.

Horst Seehofer wants to create detention centers on the borders of Germany to detain migrants from the Balkan states and send them back swiftly.

Great idea. As I've pointed out on this blog ad nauseam, the mainstream German press is manipulating its readers by referring to all illegal immigrants to Germany as Flüchtlinge (refugees). That is factually false.

There are currently two main sources of illegal immigration into Germany.

The first of these are economic refugees from certain Balkan countries (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo) and certain states on the Russian periphery. Their home countries aren't rich or particularly well-governed, but they are stable and not at war. This group makes up between 50 and 60% of current illegal immigration into Germany by land. The above graph shows that between January and March 2015, 61.6% of 'refugees' came from West Balkan countries.

By and large, they are immigrating illegally -- that is, without any legal right to remain on German territory for a long period (many can enter legally). Over 99% of them will never qualify for political asylum, because they are merely economic migrants -- people fleeing a relatively poor country to a richer one. They are not facing starvation or epidemics, they are merely facing a relative lack of promising economic opportunities. While their motives are understandable, economic migrants are not, and have never been recognized as refugees under international law. No country is obliged to accept or accommodate economic migrants. No country has ever or will ever do so, except for reasons of ethnic affinity (such as when Germany permitted ethnic Germans to immigrate from Russia).

The second group are people fleeing war, deadly persecution, and extreme hardship in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and a few other countries. These are about 50% of current immigration flows. Many of these people -- especially Middle Eastern Christians or Shiites facing genocide by ISIS or other extreme Islamic groups -- have a legitimate claim to political asylum in Germany. Almost all of them actually do get legal recognition as refugees and are awarded political asylum.

Seehofer is proposing changes to make rapid processing and deportation of migrants in the first group easier. This is not populism, it's not rabble-rousing, it's a good idea. Economic migrants in the first group have no legal right to be in Germany, and paying to house them while their frivolous asylum claims are processed is a waste of scarce resources. Currently, stories are circulating in Albania and Kosovo that Albanians are welcome (g) in Germany and will be allowed to stay if they can only get in, and that life is great up here in Germany. Of course, they aren't welcome, and have no legal right to stay. They should be detained humanely, fingerprinted and quickly deported. As large charter buses arrive back in Tirana and Prishtina, word will get around that Germany actually is beginning to enforce its humane and reasonable laws, and perhaps Albanians will set about working to improve conditions in their own homeland.

Migrants from the second group are genuine refugees. Germany and many other countries should offer these people political asylum and access to housing and support until the severe problems plaguing their homelands are resolved. This is both a moral and a legal obligation. Ensuring the swift and reliable deportation of illegal immigrants in the first group will free up vastly more resources to provide humane accommodation to refugees in the second group.

Once you clear up the confusion caused by the misleading labeling of all migrants as refugees, the reality becomes clearer, and a possible way out of the current horrible disaster of German immigration policy becomes clearer.

The Washington Post reports that 87% of American homes have air conditioning, and as every European knows, they don't just have it, they use it, baby, to create nipple-shattering indoor Arctic coldscapes (see how accurate stereotypes are?):

Overall, it's safe to say that Europe thinks America's love of air-conditioning is actually quite daft. Europeans have wondered about this particular U.S. addiction for a while now: Back in 1992, Cambridge University Prof. Gwyn Prins called America's love of air-conditioning the country's "most pervasive and least-noticed epidemic," according to the Economist. And according to the Environmental Protection Agency, it's getting worse: American demand for air-conditioning has only increased over the past decades.

The U.S. has been the world's leader in air-conditioning ever since, and it's not a leadership Americans should necessarily be proud of. According to Stan Cox, a researcher who has spent years studying indoor climate controlling, the United States consumes more energy for air conditioning than any other country. In many parts of the world, a lack in economic development might be to blame for a widespread absence of air-conditioning at the moment. However, that doesn't explain why even most Europeans ridicule Americans for their love of cooling and lack of heat tolerance.

Of course, Northern Europe is still colder than most regions within the United States and some countries, such as Italy or Spain, have recently seen an increase in air-conditioning. "The U.S. is somewhat unusual in being a wealthy nation much of whose population lives in very warm, humid regions," Cox told The Washington Post in an e-mail. However, the differences in average temperatures are unlikely to be the only reason for Europeans' reluctance to buy cooling systems. It's also about cultural differences.

...

"The bottom line is that America's a big, rich, hot country," Cox told The Post. "But if the second, fourth, and fifth most populous nations -- India, Indonesia, and Brazil, all hot and humid -- were to use as much energy per capita for air-conditioning as does the U.S., it would require 100 percent of those countries' electricity supplies, plus all of the electricity generated by Mexico, the U.K., Italy, and the entire continent of Africa," he added.

That's not at all an unlikely scenario: In 2007, only 2 percent of Indian households had air-conditioning, but those numbers have skyrocketed since. "The rise of a large affluent urban class is pushing use up," Cox explained.

"I have estimated that in metropolitan Mumbai alone, the large population and hot climate combine to create a potential energy demand for cooling that is about a quarter of the current demand of the entire United States," Sivak concluded in a paper published by the American Scientist.

"If everyone were to adopt the U.S.'s air-conditioning lifestyle, energy use could rise tenfold by 2050," Cox added, referring to the 87-percent ratio of households with air-conditioning in the United States. Given that most of the world's booming cities are in tropical places, and that none of them have so far deliberately adopted the European approach to air-conditioning, such calculations should raise justified concerns.

Nope, Brazilians, Indonesians and Indians are definitely not going to adopt a 'European' approach to air-conditioning, because those countries don't have European climates. Anybody who lives in a humid climate falls in love with air-conditioning the minute they experience it, and never go back. So we'd better get crackin' on much more efficient air-conditioners yesterday. Some Indian zillionaire should sponsor a contest: $10 million to the first team that develops an 80% more efficient air conditioner. The Future of Humanity™ could well at stake.

Some comments I've been getting here and elsewhere show some people may be unfamiliar with demographic statistics. So here's a short post to put things in perspective:

The Country of Utopia has 1 million inhabitants, split between two population groups: the Martians and the Plutonians.

There are 900,000 Martians and 100,000 Plutonians.

In 2014, there were 27 murders committed by Martians, and 30 murders committed by Plutonians.

So, the raw number of murders committed by each population group is similar. However, raw numbers are meaningless.

The most common measure in criminology, sociology, and demographics is rate per year per 100,000 people. Almost every population-level statistic you see uses this measure.

So, in 2014 there were 3 murders per 100,000 committed by Martians, and 30 murders per 100,000 committed by Plutonians.

This means the murder rate among Plutonians is about 10 times higher than the murder rate among Martians. (This is generally the ratio in the USA when it comes to murder rates among whites and blacks.)

This also means that only .003% of Martians and .03% of Plutonians committed murder in 2014.

In other words, when it comes to murder, the vast majority of both Martians and Plutonians are law-abiding citizens.

So, the statement that 'those Plutonians are all criminals' is an moronic over-generalization. The statement: 'there is a much higher rate of murder among Plutonians' is accurate.

Now if only .03% of Plutonians are murderers, why is it that some Plutonian neighborhoods may be unsafe to visit? That's because the murder rate within the Plutonian population is not evenly distributed. 50% of Plutonians are female, and 50% of Plutonian males are under 10 or over 45. These groups present very low risk of violent crime. For simplicity's sake we'll leave out socio-economic status (poorer people universally have higher crime rates) and focus only on age. 90.5% of all homicides are committed by males, and the vast majority are committed by young males. So to continue with our example:

Let's say that 24 of the 30 homicides were committed by Plutonian men between 10 and 45 years of age: that is, 25,000 people.

That means the murder rate among young Plutonian males is 96 per 100,000. That is 3.2 times higher than the general murder rate for all Plutonians, and 32 times higher than the rate among all Martians.

Let's assume the same effect holds for Martians (not 100% true but close): the murder rate for young Martian males is 3.2 times the overall base rate of 3, or 9.6 per 100,000.

So this means that all things considered, if you want to minimize your risk of being the victim of a homicide, you should probably avoid neighborhoods with large concentrations of young Plutonian males, since they have the highest homicide rate in Utopia. Nevertheless, of course, even in this sub-group, the vast majority of young Plutonians are law-abiding, so your risk of being killed is still very low (especially since these rates are for an entire year and you'll just be there a day). However, assuming that the rates for other crimes show similar characteristics for the rate of homicide (again, this is generally true, but lots of caveats apply), your risk of being the victim of some crime in a high-young-male-Plutonian neighborhood may well be non-trivial.

In response to a few comments on the last post, here are a few graphics from a major recent paper on black crime rates in the USA. The full citation is: Steffensmeier et al., 'Reassessing Trends in Black Violent Crime, 1980-2008: Sorting out the 'Hispanic Effect' in Uniform Crime Reports Arrests, National Crime Victimization Survey Offender Estimates, and U.S. Prisoner Counts. Criminology, 2011; 49 (1): 197 DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-9125.2010.00222.x.

The problem with some American crime statistics is they lump in Hispanic offenders with whites. A part of the abstract reads:

We argue that prior studies showing a shrinking Black share of violent crime might be in error because of reliance on White and Black national crime statistics that are confounded with Hispanic offenders, whose numbers have been increasing rapidly and whose violence rates are higher than that of Whites but lower than that of Blacks.

The paper later explains why failing to separately count Hispanics may distort the true size of the Black-White gap in violent crime:

Because most Hispanics identify as White (approximately 93 percent) and few as lack (approximately 4 percent) and because crime-reporting programs typically record Hispanic arrests as White arrestees, failing to separate ethnicity from race—in particular, failing to separate Hispanics from non-Hispanic Whites—not only limits understanding of ethnic involvement but also hides the true disparity between Whites and Blacks. Rates that blend Hispanic origin across race inflate White rates and deflate Black rates, making 1) the disparity between the two groups seem less extreme than when Hispanic ethnicity is considered (Demuth, 2002, 2003; Hartney and Vuong, 2009; Steffensmeier and Demuth, 2000) and 2) possibly creating an illusion of Black–White convergence or a shrinking Black proportion of overall violence.

The authors then apply a corrective for this problem, and report the results:

1. A small-to-moderate increase in the Black fraction of homicide from 57 to 65 percent (vs. virtually no change [49–50 percent] in the confounded Black fraction).

2. A small increase in the Black fraction of robbery, from 67 to 70 percent (vs. a small decline in the confounded Black fraction from 60 to 57 percent).

3. A small increase for aggravated assault, from 42 to 44 percent (vs. a small decline in the confounded Black fraction, 37 to 34 percent).

4. A large decline in the Black fraction for rape, from 54 to 42 percent (vs. an even larger decline in the confounded Black fraction, 48 to 33 percent).

As with all modern survey, the authors consider both arrest and victimization rates, as well as other measures. Here are some relevant graphics from the paper:

So, as you can see, Blacks make up 12.6% of the US population, but according to the revised statistic in this paper, account for over 63% of all arrests for homicide. Even under the old, confounded number the percentage was 51%, still far in excess of their representation in the population. The authors then provide graphics for the multiple of how much higher black v. white crime rates are for specific crimes:

So these charts show how many times greater the Black crime rate for various crimes is than the white crime rate. The Black murder rate is about 11 times higher than the white murder rate, the black robbery rate is about 15 times higher. The gray lines are from victimization surveys, which as might be expected differ somewhat from arrest-rate surveys.

This study isn't the last word -- what study is? -- but it's well-respected and frequently cited. It shows no matter how you calculate it that rates of violent crime among Black Americans are significantly higher than those among White Americans. Since violent crimes such as these are the most likely to be punished with prison sentences, this information is essential to any assessment of potential racial discrimination in the US justice system. Any comment on the US justice system that leaves it these data is much, much worse than useless.

This is not to deny discrimination in the US justice system -- many studies show Black and Hispanic offenders receive 10-15% longer sentences than Whites for comparable crimes, and of course the imprisonment of non-violent drug offenders is heavily racially-loaded. But the huge disparities between Black and White violent crime rates shown above are doing a lot of the work explaining the over-representation of Blacks in US prisons. And I'm sure that the statistics of crime and incarceration rates for non-ethnic Germans in Germany probably would reveal similar trends.